Mass atrocities in Nigeria need to be stopped

From Obinna Odogwu, Awka

Global Rights, an international organisation that champions human rights protection, justice, and equality, is worried about mass killings, kidnappings, and other crimes in Nigeria; and wants an end to them.

At its recent workshop on Data Collection, Reporting, and Documentation in Abuja organised for civil society actors, journalists, and community monitors, its Programme Manager in the country, Noya Sedi, took our correspondent through the activities of the organisation and more. Excerpts…

Can you take us through what this organisation does in Nigeria and how its activities contribute to the country’s development?

Global Rights is a nongovernmental, capacity building organisation. We work at the intersection of protection, promotion, and fulfilment of human rights through good governance. So we work with local activists across Africa to promote and protect the rights of marginalised populations. For over 30 years, we have supported underserved communities in Nigeria to build a culture of human rights to strengthen participatory governance and to demand accountability for governance failures. So, what we do and part of why this convening today is important is in line with our security and human rights thematic area; it’s one of the core components of our work. What we do here is that we document patterns of violence and mass atrocities across the country to ensure that the patterns of violence are forensically documented; activists, victims and the impacted communities are equipped to demand accountability; and that stakeholders are able to leverage our data for early warning and response events or future atrocities. So, that is the core foundation of why we have this convening today. So the community of practice against mass atrocities has been in existence since 2019, if I am not mistaken, and what it has tried to do is mostly to hold the government accountable. Earlier today when I was speaking I had mentioned something about how we have the documentation and the data problem when it comes to tracking violence and mass atrocities across the country. And we have seen how because there is a documentation and data management problem, there is an accountability issue. You can’t hold people to account when you don’t have anything physical to hold them to account to. So that was the gap that Global Rights identified and that’s why we formed this community, a coalition of people who will serve as watchdogs for lack of a better word, and document these incidents of violence with a need to hold the government accountable. So, violence in this sense could be killings, it could be kidnappings, abductions and other various forms of mass atrocities that obtain in the county so that our data can speak for us, our work, and the lives that have been lost and the lives that have been impacted by mass atrocities across the country. So, that’s what this training is for. We are just stretching that work. We are constantly expanding our community of practice and we are working with passionate individuals and organisations who want to hold the government accountable and hold them responsible for the security of their community and their immediate environment by documenting and preserving data and going about it the right way. We feel that you people are going to be documenting data the right way having been equipped with proper skills and capacity to do that effectively. So that is part of what we have started.

In your activities in Nigeria, how have the security agencies and other stakeholders been helpful to you to ensure you achieve your targets?

Calling out the government is not always easy. And when you are calling out the government it comes with a price; it comes with a price of you are going to have a lot of resistance; you are going to have a lot of pushback; and you are going to find yourself in situations where you are defending yourself and defending your numbers a lot. So, that has happened. But we’ve also seen where our numbers are relied on; and that’s why we continue to do what we do. So we have seen where our numbers are relied on and where our numbers have been used to demand accountability from the government; and our figures have served as a foundation for establishing the incidence of these atrocities in the country. And that really informs the work that we do. So in terms of, say, collaboration with security agencies, yes, we can say we train security officials. We do this training, we do that, we engage stakeholders but a lot of that, like I said, is a lot of walking on eggshells because of the kind of work that we do and these are the people that we are consistently calling out. We are consistently calling out the government and the security agencies. So, the collaboration may not be in the way that you will expect but the gap is there. The gap is identified and what we try to do is fill that gap by providing the relevant training required. And sometimes it has proven helpful. And even when you said security agencies, yes, we call them out but we still have those who have at least worked with us and even provided us with the skill set that we then pass forward to the communities that we engage and work with and build their capacities.

You mentioned pushback. How hard have you and your team been pushed in the course of doing your job?

Like I said, you find yourself defending the numbers a lot. And sometimes when you are even speaking about the failure of the government to protect its citizens which is the core mandate of the government or the state, your fellow actors sometimes in the space will call some of your numbers to question. And so, it is a lot of work and that’s why there was a question earlier about the integrity of our data. Because we know that these numbers will consistently be contested or challenged; and we know that this is data that can easily be quoted, we always try to ensure that our numbers and our data are as credible as possible. So yes, we get a lot of pushback; we get a lot of resistance. You have to defend your claims; you have to consistently associate yourself with it. If you’re claiming one thing, the other side is claiming a different thing or opposing what you know to be true. So, of course, I think in any form of advocacy that you are doing, you will always meet pushback. And when you are advocating and demanding accountability from the government; when you’re calling out the government constantly, people who are pro government will always see holes to pick in the work that you do, whether it is relevant or related to that particular issue; whatever issue it is, they will always find ways to pick holes in it. It is just a price to pay. It just comes with responsibility. You can’t be calling people out and people who are friends of those will not consistently try to sabotage the work that you’re doing. But, it’s a price to pay. And it’s just something that you have to be willing to sacrifice to get the work done.

Have you or any member of your team been threatened in any way, including threats to your lives, in the course of carrying out your duty?

I think, rather than say personal threat, I will say that because of the kind of work that we do, we find ourselves sometimes in environments that are hostile; and that hostility can turn violent very quickly. Like I said, we don’t just sit down here in Abuja and conjure figures or conjure information. When we spoke earlier today about working with communities and working with those most affected and seeing them less as victims and more as stakeholders, we were preaching what we practise. So, we do go to these communities; we do work with these people and these are areas that are sometimes hotspots; you know, we enter these places; and because the work needs to be done, we find ourselves in an environment that may not necessarily be safe at the time. So, of course that comes with its own threats. I think it’s a constant threat actually when you are working with affected communities or violent prone areas and consistently, I think that being constantly in fear of violence affects your life because you have to do the work; you have to go to the field, you have to collaborate with these actors, and you know that you’re doing that and your life is very well at risk but you still continue to do it. So, yes, there are situations where we find ourselves in those kinds of environments; those hostile spaces but we still do what we do. But at the end of the day it is the person that is alive that will collect data; it is the person that is alive that would advocate for human rights. So we try to do whatever we do with caution. Like I said, when you talked about security agencies and collaboration, they are still sometimes the ones who help us and provide that on ground support and feedback that we need to ensure our own safety when we are in these hostile communities that are not necessarily safe.

What would Global Rights consider its biggest win since it came on board in Nigeria?

We have recorded a couple of successes over the course of the work that we have been doing. I think the community of practice against mass atrocities is one of its kind; and I would say that that is a big win for us. The Kano Human Rights Network and the Bauchi Human Rights Network are testaments of the work that we have done. We built capacity at the grassroots and through that capacity building that we did, we were able to form a human rights network in Kano and Bauchi States. We also filed a petition at the Human Rights Commission, I think in 2014, for extrajudicial killings and that resulted in the awarding of compensation to 19 people for violation of their rights to life and physical integrity and livelihood. We were partly responsible for the pressure mounted on the Federal Government that secured the release of funds for the remediation of mining communities in Zamfara State. So, yes, I think that also speaks to the work that we do around directing resource governance to secure the rights of mining host communities and ensure that mining activities are not to the disadvantage of the communities; that those activities take place. It is also to our credit that the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability was born; and that coalition has grown to be a vibrant coalition of 114 organisations from 31 countries. And I think since 2018 we have consistently produced multi analysis of mass atrocities across Nigeria. For me, I think that is the hallmark of the work that we do because consistently counting people who have been killed; who have been abducted; you know, counting the dead and counting people who have been affected by violence in Nigeria and doing that steadily now for about eight years without ever stopping is a huge win for us. We do that every month and every month we release data that is credible and reliable without ever stopping or taking a break. People do these things and then sometimes either their data lose credibility, reliability or becomes tainted or it just entirely stops, but we have consistently been committed to doing it as our own way of advocating for human rights and holding government and security agencies accountable. I think that is a huge win for us. And it is something that we’ll continue to do. I already talked about the community of practice against mass atrocities. We also created early warning and response coordination, application and dashboard. I think I spoke a little bit about early warning today, and I talked about how it’s not inclusive. So we did try to build a system of inclusion where community members who are in those communities that are most affected can serve as reporters of early warning signs and triggers via a coordinated response mechanism to address issues of violence against security in their respective communities.